Headband Knitting Patterns

I've started typing 3 knitting patterns for 3 different cabled headband designs, in English and French. I like cables, I think it makes the headbands look thick and warm so once again I guess I'm knitting out of season. I thought I would have these headband patterns done within about a week but it's actually taking more time than I thought as I'm clearly not good at making decisions:

1- What wool should I use? I'm working with Drops Nepal for now; it's a lovely wool/alpaca mix Aran weight yarn (worsted in US terms) but I don't want my pattern buyers to be stuck with that one brand, so I've knit them in acrylic and wool/acrylic mix. I would like to know if they would work in cotton too but I might leave that for another summery, lace design.

Yummy Drops Nepal Yarn

More Drops Nepal

2- Sizes: I would like to have at least 3 sizes, ranging from children age 7 to large size women, but where do I stop? I have a small head for an adult so I find it hard to knit for a large head: between my 2 daughters and me, the 3 heads in my household measure between 20.5 and 21 inches and the heads of my dummies are also 21.5 and 21 inches but when I search for hat/headband head sizes I see that the average head size for a woman is 22 inches, meaning that there must be some women out there with a 23 inches or more head size (I find it hard to believe, with the tiny brain in my child-sized head;). I don't think it really matters that much as all the headband designs are knitted flat, meaning I could just write the pattern for a repeat and indicate to knit as many repeats as your need for your head size, but that for me, is a lazy pattern, making me look like I couldn't be bothered stating how many repeats for a certain head size, and I don't want to give my customers that impression.

The Acrylic Test

3- I want to list the finished items in my shop too, and I think I should just have a medium size headband to use for my photos but with 3 designs and the 4 new beautiful colours of Drops Nepal yarn I picked, but I need to make the largest size too, in order to determine whether 1 ball of yarn is enough for all sizes; I wonder if I should list just 1 design per colour or go crazy and knit the headbands in lots of different colours, knowing that I might get an order for a colour/size combination I didn't make and then need to have all the colours in my stash just in case so I don't have to wait close to a week for yarn on a custom order to be delivered?

Decisions, decisions....I might have a clearer idea once I've had some coffee;)

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More Cable Headbands On The Way

I sold a few of my cable headbands, mostly around Christmas, and I hadn't realised until last week that I had run out of the smallest size ear warmers so I picked up my knitting needles and whipped out a few more of these hand knit cable headbands:

Army Green Cable Headband

Cream Tweed Cable Headband

Denim Blue Cable Headband

Because these cable headbands seem to have become popular in my shop (Yay!), I hope to knit some more very soon, in other colours and using various cable stitches to add a bit more variety (maybe cotton for the summer?).

I am planning on writing the corresponding knitting patterns too. I'm not sure whether I should publish knitting patterns for these headbands one by one or by groups of maybe 3 different designs, so I may try both options and see what works best (I know that if I was to choose between 3 single patterns at €3.80 each and 3 patterns together at around €8.00 or €9.00, I'd probably go for the second option, but unfortunately (or fortunately?) I'm not in everyone's head.

For now I am working on knitting and relisting my original ear warmers in the original colours while also testing a new amiguri pattern for Peeko Crafts. I expect I'll have all this done by St Patrick's day and then I will start on my new designs.

Don't expect too much too quick, though, as I've also just taken up an online accountancy course: I can't expect knitting to feed my family but hopefully refreshing my accountancy training will help me get a decent paying job (and maybe less time for blogging and social media, but I'll make sure to keep a few hours for knitting in the evenings;-)

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